


Ripples

by Riona



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, Grief, Mentions of Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27544642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona
Summary: The newsreader sayssuicide, and Sojiro breaks the mug.(Ten people know exactly who the news is talking about, and now they’re going to have to deal with that.)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 128





	Ripples

The news is saying the police captured the leader of the Phantom Thieves.

Sojiro watches tensely, drying a mug. Or circling a cloth around a mug, at least. It’s probably long dry by now. He just needs something to do with his hands.

He’s pretty sure that kid was the leader. That was the sense he got, at least, like the others were always looking to him.

There’s been no mention of the fate of the other Phantom Thieves.

Sojiro usually doesn’t make personal phone calls while he’s running the café. He’s broken that rule today, or at least he’s tried. Futaba isn’t answering.

He’s been tuning out customers. Should probably just close up the café; he can’t run it when his head’s like this. But someone might make the connection, might figure out that he _knew_ what his lodger was involved with.

The newsreader says _suicide_ , and Sojiro breaks the mug.

-

Shinya’s mother hurries him away from the television, telling him he’s too young for this. It’s too late. He’s heard it.

Shinya’s a kid, but he’s not stupid. He knows bad stuff happens. He...

He’s leaning against the wall of his room, fists clenched and eyes squeezed shut, angry tears in his throat.

It’s not true, right?

Maybe Shinya’s techniques weren’t good enough. Maybe the police wouldn’t have caught him if Shinya had been a better teacher.

It can’t be true. He’s a Phantom Thief. He can’t – he can’t just _die_ , just like that.

-

Kawakami had really started to feel that she had a future again. She could live her own life, she could rededicate herself to being a teacher.

And now another student is dead, and she’s right back to wondering if she could have prevented it somehow.

She spent so much time cleaning his room. Should she have taken the mess as a warning sign, a symptom of depression? Or was he just a normal messy teenage boy?

It’s hard to think of the leader of the Phantom Thieves as _normal_.

She sometimes got the sense he always kept his room a little messy as an excuse to call her over; he was worried about her, he wanted to make sure she had work. She was supposed to be his teacher, but he was always the one looking after her.

Apparently she should have repaid the favour, should have worried about him in return. She was too caught up in her own problems to think about it.

A voice breaks through the clouds in her head, and she suddenly realises one of her students has been trying to talk to her.

She’ll protect this one. She’ll protect all of them.

-

Takemi keeps seeing that strange, fearless kid out of the corner of her eye, lying semi-conscious on the bed in her office. He’s not there, of course. She supposes he’ll never be there again.

He never backed down. She still can’t figure out if he really wanted the drugs for his exams, if they were for his work with the Phantom Thieves, if he was just doing the trials as an excuse to spend time with her.

Maybe he didn’t feel he had a choice. She definitely had enough blackmail material on him to keep him coming back.

She never told him about the time he almost stopped breathing. She was expecting his systems to slow down; she’d suspected he might pass out for a while. She wasn’t expecting to end up sitting by his bedside for two hours, counting his breaths, keeping her fingers on his slowing pulse to make sure it didn’t fade out completely.

He’d made it through. Maybe that doesn’t make a difference, now that he’s dead anyway. But hopefully he at least had some good experiences between then and now, something to make those two tense hours worth it.

Honestly, a part of her is just glad it wasn’t her trials that killed him.

-

Chihaya knew this was coming. She knew it was coming, didn’t she? From the first time she read the cards for him, she knew this boy wouldn’t see adulthood.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. It’s just...

He just challenged fate so confidently. It was easy for her to get swept up in it, to believe that that was actually a fight he could win.

She lays out the cards again and again, restless. He’s dead, they tell her, as starkly as the news report did.

He’s still alive, they tell her, at the same time.

It doesn’t make sense. He can’t be dead _and_ alive. She’s making mistakes, she’s losing her focus because she’s upset.

She feels stupid for letting herself believe that fate could be changed.

-

It can’t be true. It can’t be true. It isn’t true.

But there’s that empty seat at school.

Mishima’s never really been sure if the leader of the Phantom Thieves actually liked him that much. Maybe being liked isn’t really what matters, though. No matter how that guy felt about Mishima, he still saved him. Kamoshida’s gone. Mishima’s not constantly trying to hide bruises any more, he can wake up on schooldays and feel something other than that twisting dread.

He’d actually started looking forward to school. Seeing the Phantom Thieves in the corridors, knowing he was in on the secret. Knowing his website could play a role in the way they helped people, even if it wasn’t a big one.

There’s a cinema in Yongen-Jaya now. _Mishima_ did that. Well, it was the Phantom Thieves, but Mishima got them the info.

And now the person who saved him is dead?

Is he supposed to just accept that?

-

Iwai’s first thought is if this could be traced back to him somehow. It’s usually the first place his mind goes when someone he knows is taken in by the police. He’s got Kaoru to look after; he doesn’t need the cops coming down on him for supplying the Phantom Thieves.

Supplying the Phantom Thieves with toy knives and model guns, he guesses. He still can’t figure that one out. Do they just threaten people into changing their ways? Doesn’t seem like that kid’s style, but it’s not like anything else makes sense.

Anyway. To start with, he’s tense, wondering if the kid turned him in. When a few days have gone past and the police don’t seem any more interested in Untouchable than usual, though, _that’s_ when Iwai catches himself thinking about the fact that the kid went and fucking died.

Iwai cared about him, didn’t he? He fucked up and started caring. Wouldn’t be the first time.

He lights up a cigarette in the alley outside Untouchable. Blows the smoke out of his lungs, staring up at the narrow strip of sky between the buildings.

It’s not the first time. If he learns anything from this, it’ll be the last.

-

Hifumi hadn’t realised she’d become so used to the visits from her regular opponent. It feels very lonely, going back to playing shogi against herself.

Her acquaintance with him feels like such a strange whirlwind, now that she looks back on it with the knowledge that it’s over. She was so proud, at first. And then she discovered her matches were fixed, she realised she had never been the player she thought she was.

Her confidence had taken a terrible blow. But she had started to rebuild it, with his help. And the new confidence she was finding felt more solid, somehow, more real. She’d realised how much she had to learn, but she also knew she was ready to start learning, now that she had escaped her mother’s illusion.

She’s going to keep learning.

She makes a decisive move, slams her piece onto the board. The clack rings out in the church like a strange kind of prayer.

He’s gone. But she’s still here, and she won’t let all that he did for her go to waste.

-

“You’ve been drinking more,” Lala says, reproachful.

“Not enough,” Ohya mumbles into the bar.

She wants to write an article exposing the leader of the Phantom Thieves, his real identity. How smart he was, how charming, how he had this kind of dry sense of humour and never let her get away with any shit. How he was this brilliant, fascinating kid who genuinely cared. How it’s a goddamn crime that the police let him die in their custody.

But it’d be a reckless move, it’d mean reporters or even vigilantes might go after his friends and family. She can hear him advising against it in her head.

Fine. He won’t let her write his legacy, but he can’t stop her drinking. At least that way she’s only destroying herself.

-

Yoshida was never really sure whether that boy actually _believed_ in him, as a politician. He was certainly too sharp to think Yoshida actually stood much of a chance of election. And he talked about entering politics himself, but it never rang true; Yoshida suspects it was a cover story, that he was hoping to learn orating skills to promote the Phantom Thieves.

Yoshida meant to ask him about it, at some point. He supposes he’s missed the opportunity.

Whatever the motivation behind it, he was helpful and supportive and interesting to converse with, and Yoshida quietly misses him. He finds himself scanning the crowd for his face when he gives speeches. It’s a crowd that would probably never have gathered without his support.

He wants to do something for the boy’s family, send his condolences. But he wouldn’t know where to find them. Asking Shujin Academy for his details seems like it would invite questions. He’s only a child who helped with a few speeches, and Yoshida wouldn’t be able to explain how he knows about his death; the news report only called him _the teenage leader of the Phantom Thieves_.

There’s nobody Yoshida can talk to about this loss. But he can talk to the public about the importance of protecting the youth, about support for mental health. He can say, _However you feel about the Phantom Thieves, this was a tragedy._

If he puts enough passion into his voice, he can disguise the grief.

-

There’s a knock on the door. Sojiro herded the customers out and closed up shop straight after the suicide announcement. Might’ve been a suspicious thing to do. He can’t think far ahead enough to care.

He’s been sitting in one of the booths, elbows on the table and head in his hands. He makes himself glance up, at the window in the door.

It’s the prosecutor. Should’ve guessed she’d come straight to the leader’s lodgings. That’s all he needs.

The prosecutor, and—

Sojiro scrambles to his feet.

They’re wearing a hood. It might not be him.

The prosecutor knocks again, glances left and right. “You might want to let us in,” she calls through the glass.

Sojiro hurries to the door, almost tripping over himself, and yanks it open.

It’s him. Hood up, but there’s no mistaking it. It’s him. It’s the kid.

He’s alive.

“I’m home,” he says.

“You _bastard_ ,” Sojiro says, breathless and furious and almost in tears. He drags the kid across the threshold and into his arms.


End file.
